The objective of the research is to provide descriptive and analytical information concerning the coming out process and coping strategies of gay women. Specfic objectives involve obtaining information about each of the following: age of realization of orientation, extent of revealing one's homosexual orientation, actual and anticipated response of others, job and other discrimination, socializing with other homosexuals, primary relationship and sexual fidelity, extent of heterosexual dating, marriage and children, affiliation with gay or women's organizations, religous convictions, and the correlations among the variables degree of coming out, healthy self-concept, age, education, group support, attitudes of religions, assistance from the mental health professions. Data will be gathered by means of personal interviews using an instrument containing 212 items. The questionnaire was pretested with four gay women, revised for use in a pilot study with 26 subjects and subsequently revised for the proposed research. Potential subjects will be solicited with the cooperation of three gay organizations in the Baltimore-Washington area, a lesbian bar and a network of gay women known by the principal investigator and the research assistant. A stratified random opportunity sample of 100 lesbians will be selected from the lists of volunteers. On the basis of a pilot study conducted in the spring of 1977 and data from Weinberg and Williams, the principal investigator has advanced 90 research hypotheses concerning the objectives listed above. Frequencies, correlation and regression analyses, crosstabulations and factor analysis will be performed with the assistance of computerized techniques.